Colombia

On 21 May workers involved in construction operations in BP’s Tauramena installation entered into occupation demanding: • a wage increase; the establishment a wage scale; • due process in disciplinary decisions; • labour guarantees for the workers. On 2 June army forces entered the plant. At time of writing they are harassing the workers, who stay overnight chaining themselves to plant equipment so that they cannot be dislodged. Since BP began oil exploration and production in Casanare, Colombia in the early 1990s, six thousand people have been assassinated and three thousand people...

Numa Andrés Paredes Betancourt, a member of the National Executive Committee of the ACEU (one of Colombia’s main student union federations), visited Britain recently as part of a trip organised by Justice for Colombia, the labour movement campaign in solidarity with workers and students in Colombia. Daniel Randall spoke to him at the National Union of Students conference in Blackpool. DR: Could you tell us something about the campaigns you’re running currently? NAPB: In international terms we want people to focus on campaigning to get the UK government to stop funding the Colombian military....

The Colombian army has assassinated three members of the agricultural workers trade union FENSUAGRO, from the town of San Juan de Sumapaz on the outskirts of the Colombian capital Bogotá. On 18 March the men were travelling to another town to inspect some cattle, when they went missing. Some days later the Colombia media reported that the army had killed three guerrillas in the area and, on 27 March the families of the three men identified their bodies. The army’s claim the men were guerrillas is the same claim they made last year when they assassinated three senior trade union leaders in the...

From Justice for Colombia The National Trade Union School [NTUS], a EU funded research institution based in Medellin, Colombia, records 94 assassinations of trade unionists in 2004, an increase on the 90 trade unionists that both the NTUS and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) registered killed in 2003. The NTUS has also reported an increase in “disappearances” and arbitrary detentions. This deterioration contrasts with Colombian government claims that human rights abuses against trade union members are declining. Send messages of protest to: President Alvaro Uribe...

From Justice for Colombia : Just after midday on Saturday January 29th some 500 members of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian Army entered the rural area of Jiguamuando. The soldiers spent some six hours terrorising the Afro-Colombian inhabitants of the area accusing them of being supporters of leftwing FARC guerrillas. Homes were raided, local people beaten up and supplies and livestock were destroyed. During the incursion a group of soldiers near the community of Cano Seco shot and wounded the 50-year-old leader of the local peasant farmer union Pedro Murillo. Some minutes later the same...

By Pablo Velasco Inside: Strike wave in South Korea Soldiers terrorise workers Haitian workers Victory for Colombian banana workers' strike General strike in Nigeria stops petrol price rises Strike wave in South Korea Korean taxi drivers and metal workers went on strike this month for wage increases and better working conditions, joining hospital workers on their week-long walkout. About 4,600 drivers of the Korean Federation of Taxi Workers' Unions, an affiliate of the independent Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), are demanding the introduction of a minimum wage, a strengthened...

From the Colombian trade union federation, CUT In 2003, 78 trade unionists were killed in Colombia by paramilitary groups. Since the foundation of the Colombian Trade Union Federation (CUT), 3,800 trade unionists have died that way. The State has not had the political will to find those responsible, to judge them and thus mitigate the pain of the victims. The vast majority of the legal cases has been archived or remain in preliminary stages, without possibility of showing to the world the truth about these crimes against humanity. The state, as always, has responded in a violent way to our...

IN LONDON Vigil 7.30 p.m. Friday 26 March onwards to coincide with negotiations between union and senior managers in Bogotá Picket 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday 27 March Both outside Coca Cola Great Britain and Ireland HQ headquarters, 1 Queen Charlotte Street, Hammersmith, London W6 (adjacent to Hammersmith tube). more information below STATEMENT FROM SINALTRAINAL Thirty workers at the US multinational have for 11 days been on hunger strike, in rejection of the corporation's collective sackings, in defence of their jobs and for the survival of their union SINALTRAINAL. After 264 hours of fasting...

By Pablo Velasco Colombian oil workers halt privatisation: solidarity works! "Massive summer strikes" planned in Korea ANC against anti-privatisation activists Argentine workers fight for a six-hour day Colombian oil workers halt privatisation: solidarity works! Colombian oil workers have won their struggle against privatisation, thanks to their resolute strike action backed up by international solidarity. In the last issue of Solidarity we reported on how the Colombian government was trying to break the month-long strike at Ecopetrol, the national oil company, using military force. The Uribe...

One of the fiercest debates at the Irish Social Forum (see page 6) was about the decision of University College Dublin's student union to boycott Coke in protest at the company's alleged links with far right paramilitaries in Colombia. Activists say a number of trade union activists in the company's plants have been murdered, many local union organisations have been destroyed, under threat from paramilitary organistions. Following a call by the Colombian trade union SINALTRAINAL, the leaders of UCD SU (mostly members of Labour Youth or the ex-SWP group Socialist Alternative) organised a...